Thursday, February 19, 2004

Let's take a quick look at the Cubs 2004 pitching staff pre-Maddux and then with him. We'll just pro-rate 2003 Win Shares by Innings Pitched, with the goal of adding up to about 1,460 IP (Cubs total in 2003). Basically, a pitcher who was credited with 5 win shares for 100 innings of work will get credit for 10 win shares over 200 innings of work. (Thanks to BaseballGraphs for the 2003 Win Share data)

I'm working on using this same approach for every team in order to make a (wildly inaccurate!) set of predictions for the 2004 season. My predictions will likely show that the Cubs are out in front of the NL Central pack by about 5-6 games, making the additional $8M Maddux win unnecessary. Of course, the Maddux signing does add depth, a potential mentor, maybe some additional revenue(?) and a chance for the Cubs to partially redeem their past failure to keep Maddux. I'm not arguing that the deal is all bad, just that it's not going to improve the Cubs by a whole lot.

The Baseball Savant agrees that Maddux isn't going to dramatically improve the Cubs, but he disagrees with my prediction for the division. He thinks the Astros will take the NL Central. Read both of the Savant's posts. Well written and interesting - hard to complain about that. Seems like Savant, however, overlooks the contributions from the bullpens and benches of the various NL Central contenders. Maybe that's why our projections are so different.

Let's take a quick look at the Cubs 2004 pitching staff pre-Maddux and then with him. We'll just pro-rate 2003 Win Shares by Innings Pitched, with the goal of adding up to about 1,460 IP (Cubs total in 2003). Basically, a pitcher who was credited with 5 win shares for 100 innings of work will get credit for 10 win shares over 200 innings of work. (Thanks to BaseballGraphs for the 2003 Win Share data)

I'm working on using this same approach for every team in order to make a (wildly inaccurate!) set of predictions for the 2004 season. My predictions will likely show that the Cubs are out in front of the NL Central pack by about 5-6 games, making the additional $8M Maddux win unnecessary. Of course, the Maddux signing does add depth, a potential mentor, maybe some additional revenue(?) and a chance for the Cubs to partially redeem their past failure to keep Maddux. I'm not arguing that the deal is all bad, just that it's not going to improve the Cubs by a whole lot.

The Baseball Savant agrees that Maddux isn't going to dramatically improve the Cubs, but he disagrees with my prediction for the division. He thinks the Astros will take the NL Central. Read both of the Savant's posts. Well written and interesting - hard to complain about that. Seems like Savant, however, overlooks the contributions from the bullpens and benches of the various NL Central contenders. Maybe that's why our projections are so different.